Gender Hierarchy

A project by Space One (Seoul) in collaboration with Grey Projects (Singapore)

A project by Space One (Seoul) in collaboration with Grey Projects (Singapore).

In Partnership with the Goethe-Institut Singapore
With Support from The Council and TUFF CLUB

Within the contemporary societies of major Asian cities is a prominent hierarchical structure in gender. With rapid growth, focus on economic stability, the conformity to and normalcy of the gender gap, this hierarchical structure remains an unchallenged status quo and continues to be subconsciously perceived as ‘normal’. As a part of an ongoing research project, ‘Gender Hierarchy’ addresses the lack of awareness and need for broader and more inclusive conversations in how this affects all genders and society as a whole, in all aspects from fundamental ideologies to the everyday mundane in relation to others.

Shifting from the vertical center of patriarchy and phallocentric gaze to geometry of complexity and alterity, it brings together artists, researchers, curators, writers and DJs from Korea, Singapore and Germany. Looking at topics of sexuality, Girl culture and feminism with an exhibition by InYoung Yeo, TcoET (Dew Kim & Luciano Zubillaga), Stephanie Jane Burt, Priyageetha Dia; lectures & panel talk by Patricia Reed, Amy Ireland, Tania Roy, Clare Veal, InYoung Yeo; mural painting by MAN.De (Mandy Schöne-Salter) and a music event by DJs LINNÉA, RAH and Cats On Crack, the project hopes to share ideas on the common threads in reflecting on the contemporary state of gender hierarchy and further discuss future possibilities.

::: Street Art :::

PROGRAMME DETAILS

Talk/panel

Join us on September 13th at 5PM at LASALLE’s Winstedt campus for a talk by Patricia Reed and Amy Ireland, moderated by InYoung Yeo. The lectures will be followed by a panel discussion with Patricia Reed, Amy Ireland, InYoung Yeo, Tania Roy and Clare Veal.

Examining the normalisation of segregation and gendered expectations in major cities in Asia, the talk “Gender Hierarchy: On Critiquing Verticality and Looking Towards Diversified Geometry” addresses the geometric linear verticality of the gender gap in Asian cities that hold on to their traditional structures and gender roles. The talk looks at the future of feminism with Amy Ireland’s ‘Feminism between Fish and Future AI: A Geotraumatic Critique of Posture’ examining Western feminist linearity and its Eastern counterargument exploring the nature/culture binary, and Patricia Reed’s ‘Feminism’s Horizonless Future’ arguing for the construction of new geometric orientations following delineation.

Despite growing liberal sentiment within the societies of major Asian cities today, gender hierarchy remains neatly woven into their social fabric. As the economy of these cities grow, gender issues are relegated to a ranking of lower importance, in favour of addressing more pragmatic economic concerns.

This project looks at the fundamental ideologies of Confucianism, examining the influence it still exerts on gender hierarchy, and how it has evolved in influencing gender roles and expectations in a contemporary Asian society swayed by western influences.

As what constitutes gender injustices continues to evolve, it’s important for us as a society to continually question and challenge the gender norms by which we are all confined. This project hopes to generate dialogues on not just current gender issues, but also the future of feminism, Cyberfeminism, and its various branches of thought as a way to discuss a direction towards non-patriarchal structures of logic, undervalued and peripheral ideologies for the future.

This project is in collaboration with Space One, an independent artist-run space in Seoul, with a focus on supporting experimental contemporary works of art. It consists of a traveling exhibition, talks, film screenings, and a residency exchange.

Party

Join us at Tuff Club after our exhibition opening on Sep 14th at 11pm for a night of dancing featuring DJs LINNÉA (Berlin), RAH (Singapore) and Cats On Crack (Singapore).

Age requirement of 18 and above for entry.

RSVP on party event page:

Street Art

In response to the theme of Gender Hierarchy, we’ve invited Australia-based German artist MAN.De (Mandy Schöne-Salter) to create a mural artwork outside of our gallery, on our building in Tiong Bahru. Mandy’s mural considers issues of trust between women and the misogynistic societies they live in.

The mural will remain on view for the duration of the exhibition.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

TALK & PANEL

Patricia Reed

Patricia Reed is an artist, writer and designer based in Berlin. As an artist, selected exhibitions include: The One and The Many, CUAG, Ottawa; The Museum of Capitalism, Oakland; Homeworks 7, Beirut; Witte de With, Rotterdam; HKW, Berlin; and Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart. Recent writings have been published in Para-Platforms (Sternberg, forthcoming); Post-Meme (Punctum Books, forthcoming); e-flux Architecture; Xeno-Architecture (Sternberg Press, forthcoming); _AH Journal; Cold War Cold World (Urbanomic); Distributed (Open Editions); Moneylab #2 (Inst. of Networked Cultures) and The Neurotic Turn (Repeater Books). With Victoria Ivanova, she co-curated the 1948 Unbound: Tokens session with the House of World Cultures team, Berlin (2017), and was a theory researcher for Public Art Munich 2018. Reed is also part of the Laboria Cuboniks (techno-material feminist) working group who published the Xenofeminist Manifesto (2015), reissued by Verso books in autumn 2018.

Amy Ireland

Amy Ireland is a writer, theorist and artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on questions of agency and technology in modernity, and she is a member of the techno-materialist trans-feminist collective, Laboria Cuboniks. Amy’s work transects disciplinary and formal boundaries, crossing into philosophy, fiction, code, occultism, performance, poetry, and sound. Selected recent art and writing can be found in ‘3049’ Tenderpixel Gallery, London; Carousel: Hybrid Literature for Mutant Readers, Issue 39; Art + Australia 53:2; e-flux #80; Aesthetics After Finitude (Melbourne: re.press, 2016); forthcoming in Unsound / Undead (Falmouth: Urbanomic) and Dark Glamor: Accelerationism and the Occult, (Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2019).

Tania Roy

Tania Roy’s research interests are in the areas of Global Anglophonic literature, Postcolonial Studies, and Critical Theory (especially the Frankfurt School). Her current research engages T.W. Adorno’s aesthetics for a revisionary account of the traditions of literary and artistic modernism in India. In a book-length study, Adorno and the Architects of Late Style in India: Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, Vikram Seth and Dayanita Singh (Ashgate: Farnham, Uk, forthcoming), she attempts to read Adorno and the modernism of the decolonizing nation together – athwart the time-zones of ‘backward’ and ‘advanced’ societies — as integral aspects of a shared modernity. In an on-going parallel interest published in journal articles and book chapters, she discusses the work of preeminent contemporary visual artists in India in the context of internecine violence and its historical memory, considered in the wake of market-liberalization. Across these lines of research, she explores how aesthetic formations of the previous century might persist — as reflections of the emancipatory promise of the decolonizing nation, or, indeed, of its historical failures — within our current ‘globalist’ conjuncture.

Clare Veal

Clare Veal is an art historian and curator who undertakes research on Southeast Asian photography, art and visual culture, with a particular focus on Thailand. She received her PhD from the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney for her thesis entitled Thainess Framed: Photography and Thai Identity, 1946-2010.

Clare has research and teaching experience from institutions in Australia, Thailand and Singapore. From 2015 to 2016, she was a participating scholar in the Power Institute’s ‘Ambitious

Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art’ research programme. She is the editor for the Asian Art section of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (2016) and has contributed papers to a number of edited volumes, journals and exhibition catalogues. In addition to her work as a consultant for a survey of the Chang Tang collection in Bangkok, Clare has co-curated exhibitions including, Storytellers of the Town: Works by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (2014) and Retold-Untold Stories: Phaptawan Suwannakudt (2016).

EXHIBITION

InYoung Yeo

is an independent artist, curator and director based in Seoul. With various forms of visual, verbal, textual to performative forms of interviews manifested into visual patterns and textual formulas, her work draws its structure from complex layers of the ‘mind’ and coincidences in the multi- dimensional time and space. She has put together and participated in various projects, exhibitions, residencies, talks and workshops in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, UK, US among others. Some of her projects and exhibitions include Space One project Intersections of Common Space and Time with Seoul Art Foundation, Goethe-Institut Seoul; Seoul Digital Foundation, Seoul Data Science Lab Project A.I.MAGINE with Seoul City, Seoul National University; ‘a three- way dialogue’ with the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017; East Asia Goethe- Institut project A Better Version of 人 programs in Korea; Group Exhibitions A Free Breakfast, Multitude, Bare; and Solo Exhibitions Space, Visual Interview and Self.

TcoET (Dew Kim & Luciano Zubillaga)

Dew Kim (Aka HornyHoneydew) s a South Korean artist based in Seoul. He works with sculpture, moving image, installation and performance. His practice involves sexuality, queerness, feminism, sadomasochism, pop culture, religion, mysticism, and the body as forms of knowledge and research. Dew is a co-founder of the experimental art collective TcoET (The Church of Expanded Telepathy). He exhibited work at The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Camden Arts Centre, London, Haus am Lützowplatz Art, Berlin and Art Space Grove, Seoul. He graduated from Royal College of Art, MA Sculpture, and completed the residency program at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2015) and Pilotenkueche, Leipzig (2017).

Luciano Zubillaga is an artist and scholar based in London since 1993 and now working between London and Suzhou, China. He works with sound, moving image, drawing, text and performance. His work involves transdisciplinary research in the intersections of philosophy, science and collaborative art practice. He recently exhibited work at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and Image Movement, Berlin. His first feature film, Things to Come is based on the graphic score Ongilasch composed by Luis Zubillaga and narrated by German star Hanna Schygulla. In 2008, he received the London Artist Film and Video Awards (LAFVA) by the Arts Council of England and his work is part of the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection (BAFVS). Luciano is a co-founder of the experimental art collective TcoET (The Church of Expanded Telepathy). He has given public lectures internationally including Ewha Womens University, Seoul, University of Buenos Aires, John Cabot University, Rome and Beijing World Congress of Philosophy.

Priyageetha Dia

(b.1992) is a multi-disciplinary Singaporean artist whose practice leans towards site-specific guerilla installations. By bridging the banality of spaces and the act of subversion using gold mediums, her interventions question the morality of art in Singapore. Dia is known for her controversial public work The Golden Staircase in 2017 and the recent installation of Golden Flags at a public housing this year in March 2018.

Dia has been actively showcasing her works since 2017, including a collaboration with The Substation for Discipline the City campaign and a chapbook publication titled A Public Square by Singaporean author Adeline Chia. In addition, she has done several press interviews, including a feature in FEMALE Magazine’s F-Influential List in the November 2017 issue. She was also a panel speaker for ArtScience Museum’s Art from the Streets opening event in January 2018.

Stephanie Jane Burt

Stephanie Jane Burt (b. 1988) is an artist whose practice spans from sculptural installations to fictional prose. She completed her studies at Glasgow School of Art where she received her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Painting in 2012 and her Master of Fine Arts in 2014. She moved back to Singapore in 2015, where she currently works and resides.

Her work invites the viewer to explore dialogues between her installations and their settings through a fictional narrative at times referencing film and literature. She is currently invested in feminist readings of mother-daughter relations, dynamics of female friendships and the analysis and representation of Girl culture.

STREET ART

MAN.De (Mandy Schöne-Salter)

Mandy Schöne-Salter is an interdisciplinary artist working in urban art, photography and community art. She studied photography at the Nepean Arts and Design Centre and participated in an intensive Public Art workshop led by New York Artist Kendal Henry. Since 2013 Mandy has worked on multiple street art projects in Australia and Germany under the synonym MAN.De.

Her work has been exhibited in group shows across Germany and Australia including Photoszene Köln, K4 in Nürnberg, Sydney Fringe Festival and ‘See’ Public Art show in Manly. In June 2011 Mandy exhibited her first photographic study ‘Beneath The Surface’, which was part of the Head On Photo Festival and Ballarat International Foto Biennale. Her second solo show ‘Degradation & Reflection’ was exhibited at the Dubbo Regional Art Gallery and Salamanca Arts Centre Hobart in 2013 and 2014.

PARTY

LINNÉA (Trade / No Shade / Berlin)

Born in Sweden and currently based in Berlin, Linne a Palmesta l is a resident DJ at the popular TRADE party at OHM, as well as the main teacher and co-founder of the No Shade mentoring and training program for female identifying and non-binary beginner DJs.

Back in the spring of 2014, without any DJ experience or skills whatsoever, LINNE A managed to score a DJ residency for the monthly Berlin drag party Sissy. Focusing on selecting the finest tunes by the female hip-hop and R&B artists of the 90’s and early 00’s, advanced mixing techniques weren’t a necessity at the time. Over the following couple of years though, LINNE A focused on improving her DJing skills and as she got better, eventually started teaching others in the process.

Last year LINNÉA started an initiative in the name of, and inspired by, the online community Sister – a platform for female identifying and non-binary people in music. This initiative set the foundation for what in the beginning of 2017 developed into No Shade, an initiative in collaboration with ACUD MACHT NEU and funded by Musicboard Berlin. With LINNE A as the main teacher, No shade is a bimonthly event as well as DJ mentoring and training program for female and non-binary beginner DJs.

LINNÉA is also producing her own music since a year back and with one of her tracks being released on Trax Couture’s mega compilation “The WHOLE World Series” and another one released on UNITI London’s monthly single series “THE MXNIFESTO BY UNITI” – a full EP drop is to be expected by the end of 2018.

No Shade is a night club series and DJ training program for female and non-binary DJs based in Berlin. The idea is to help these DJs to get one foot in the music scene by reserving slots for them on each upcoming No Shade party line up. More than just a paid DJ gig with a well-known headliner, No Shade offers the opportunity of following a month-long DJ training program leading up to the performance. The training program is focused on DJing using CDJ-2000NXS and includes live hardware and software tutorials, private

practice sessions, basic music theory knowledge, useful technical knowledge as well as several mentors sharing their tips, tricks and personal experiences.

RAH (Darker Than Wax / Revision Music)

RAH’s foray into electronic music began with her fascination of rolling amen breaks and drum patterns of drum and bass. This formative pursuit naturally progressed to the turntables, where she discovered her latent ability as a selector.

Her sound has since developed into a distinct, eclectic style that has reached a discerning international audience across Asia, Europe and America.

RAH is part of two independent movements in Singapore, record label Darker Than Wax, and events & music promotion collective, Revision Music – where she explores worldly alternative sounds the likes of Jazz, Hip-Hop, Funk, Soul, Dub, and Bass music, which marks her distinct style of always keeping sounds fresh, feet moving and souls content.

Cats on Crack (The Council)

A successful entrepreneur in her 20s, Eileen co-founded The Council, a music agency dedicated to promoting dance music from Singapore, Asia and beyond. She is also the driving force behind two of Singapore’s most exciting alternative music venues and nightclubs, Headquarters and TUFF CLUB. Passionate about creating experiences and memories to last a lifetime, she has devoted her time to creating well-loved pop-up events and music gigs in unique locations aound Singapore, taking punters from open-air spaces to carparks and warehouse spaces. A DJ herself and a fervent champion of the dance music scene, she has created a platform to showcase the city’s best DJs and beat-makers. With her sights set beyond the Red Dot, it won’t be long before more of Singapore’s talent will go on to conquer stages overseas with her continued support.